


Corny Enough to be the Truth

by Dawnwind



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: Halloween, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2013-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-30 23:26:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawnwind/pseuds/Dawnwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Starsky and Hutch are called out on a robbery that could be from another century.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Corny Enough to be the Truth

“You know I hate going out on calls in October, especially after an all nighter,” Starsky complained, hanging up the mic on the dash of Hutch’s beater. “There’s always something creepy going on that I want no part of.”

“Starsk.” Hutch gave him a fond smile, turning the steering wheel in a tight circle to go left at the intersection. “There’s no such thing as all these ghosts and goblins you worry about. Myths, all of them.”

“What do you call Nadasy, then?” Starsky poked a finger at Hutch’s arm. “He was a vampire. He could jump between buildings like a bat—“

“Bats fly, they don’t jump.”

“Exactly my point!” Starsky yelled triumphantly. “And he bit me! On the neck, tried to pierce my carotid.”

“Definitely managed to leak any sense from your brain,” Hutch muttered, slowing to go onto the freeway.

“I heard that.”

“You didn’t become an undead, blood sucking demon,” Hutch said sensibly.

“Because he didn’t get his…” Starsky paused, momentarily stymied. What was it that vampires did exactly to turn their victims? And why were the methods slightly different from book to book? He’d have to investigate how Stoker’s Dracula differed from Rice’s Lestat, for instance. “Essence,” he said, for lack of a better word, “into my blood.”

“Soooo,” Hutch elongated the tiny word. “Getting bit is not definitive proof of vampiric lore then, is it? And I know you had garlic on your spaghetti at dinner last night, so we’re safe there.”

“And you said garlic wasn’t useful.”

“I never said that—I’m just…” Hutch drove off the freeway and down a long lane toward the address dispatch had supplied. “Strange, there’s no actual house here.” He glanced left and right but only saw rows of vegetables. “I was supporting your belief that a member of the onion family could guard you against vampires.”

“Lots of pumpkins,” Starsky commented when they’d reached the end of the street. The early morning sun threw long shadows in the fields that were really creepy. “Mildred said there was a robbery here.”

A woman dressed in a long, black pilgrim dress, a white cap and apron suddenly emerged from a thick grove of corn stalks, waving her arms frantically. Behind her, a man dressed in the same style of a completely different century and carrying a huge, wide barrelled musket, grabbed her hand, speaking to her in low tones.

“Gun,” Starsky cautioned, getting out of the car. He unholstered his own pistol but kept it pointed straight at the ground. The presence of two such odd looking people weirded him out. 

Hutch came around the car, approaching the couple who were so intent on one another they seemed to have forgotten anyone else was around. “Police,” Hutch called, holding out his ID. “Who called in a robbery?”

“Oh!” The woman shuddered, glancing between Starsky and Hutch in a panic. “Prithee, stand down, good constables. We are not the evil doers but simple folk who have been violated.”

“You want to say that again in real American?” Starsky demanded. “This is Detective Hutchinson. I’m Detective David Starsky, what’s your name and what happened?”

“She is speaking English,” Hutch said sotto-voce. “Circa 1690, I believe.” He looked fascinated.

“Virginia Ware and this be my intended…” the woman began, smoothing invisible wrinkles out of her white apron.

“Can it, Roz.” The man rolled his dark eyes. He set the musket against a corn stalk and pulled a pack of Marlboroughs out of his pocket to light up. “She’s method all the way.”

“Method?” Starsky repeated. That did not clear up a thing for him.

“Actors!” Hutch said, pocketing his ID. He patted his pockets down for a pencil.

Starsky holstered his gun, silently handing Hutch a pen. And then a pad of paper.

“I’m Jed Carstairs.” The man paused as if expecting them to recognize him. “From the daytime drama To Live another Tomorrow?”

Starsky recalled seeing the soap a few times when he was laid up after getting shot last Christmas, but Carstairs hadn’t been in the wedding scenes between a blond bimbo and a dying octogenarian. Hutch shook his head.

Carstairs frowned. “We’re filming a movie about the lost colony of Roanoke. We were to gather in this field for a scene at six am. But when we got here, the camera man discovered that his equipment was missing.”

“Purloined!” Abigail—or was it Roz exclaimed, putting a hand to her heaving breast.

“Where’d he keep cameras and stuff?” Starsky asked.

“There’s a shed back behind these corn stalks,” Carstairs explained, taking a puff on his cigarette before grounding it out in the dirt. “Can’t smoke in there, the stalks are fake and go up like dry grass in a second.”

“Can we see the shed?” Hutch asked, inspecting the corn. 

“’Tis haunted, I fear,” Roz moaned, her blue eyes enormous.

Starsky was beginning to suspect that Roz was not only method, whatever that implied, but missing a few vital brain cells as well. He couldn’t help himself. “In what way?”

“Beings in the night spirited away the photographic devices so we would be unable to relate the horrific tale of the poor villagers cast to a dreadful fate—“

“Wait a minute, I remember that story!” Starsky said. “Wasn’t Virginia Dare the first white person ever born on American soil in like 1590?”

“You know your history!” Carstairs complimented. “Actually it was 1587.”

“Verily, ‘tis so,” Roz agreed with a dazzling smile. Which revealed gleaming teeth, obviously the product of twentieth century dentistry. 

“That colony didn’t last very long. Shouldn’t you be a baby?” Starsky asked Roz, watching Hutch walk between the stalks of corn out of the corner of his eye. In between one breath and the next, Hutch disappeared completely. Slightly freaked, Starsky plunged into the crop, almost running into a solid wall. 

The thick row of corn had hidden a small shed. 

Hutch pointed to a steel padlock in the dirt. The door of the shed was gaping open. Inside, a short bearded man and another in the stereotypical garb of a camera man: red baseball cap emblazoned with the letters THX1138, a blue flannel shirt like Hutch generally wore over a blue t-shirt from a production of some movie called Star Wars, plus threadbare jeans—were arguing.

“I thought you paid it!” the one Starsky judged to be the camera man cried angrily.

“My credit card is full, Larry! I told you I had to put something on my rent or I’d be…”

“Gentlemen?” Hutch interrupted. “Police. Hutchinson and Starsky.”

“Paul Bricker, director of _Lost Colony_.” The bearded man held out a hand wearily, with a sigh. “Sorry you had to come out. I think there’s been a mistake.”

“Let me guess.” Starsky waved a hand at the debris the ‘thief’ had left behind. A few cables, one of those clapper board things he associated with movies and a director’s chair with the name Bricker on the back. “Repo?”

“How did you know?” the camera man asked.

“We’re detectives, we do that,” Starsky answered dryly. “Have you called your credit card company already?”

“Yes, that’s why I was late,” Bricker said. “I was on the phone.”

“Meanwhile, me and the cast—“ Larry began.

“You mean Carstairs and Roz…?”

“Rosalind Vermillion, the queen of the horror scream,” he continued. “My girlfriend. Did you see Vampire Bride of Henry the VIII?”

“No,” Hutch said shortly, glancing at Starsky with a ‘don’t say a word’ expression.

Starsky really wanted to see that movie now. He’d have to check the listings for his favorite drive-in theater.

“When we arrived, the lock for the door was broken and the cameras gone. Naturally we assumed we’d been robbed,” Larry said, sneering at Bricker.

“Men came this morning to repossess the cameras for non-payment.” Bricker crossed his arms. “I’d hoped to wrap this film by Halloween but now it’s all fubar ‘cause I have to convince my sister to loan us another grand. One more damned scene.”

“Good luck with that one,” Hutch said politely. “So, there’s no crime here?”

“Except injustice of the most heinous kind!” Roz arrived, throwing herself into Larry’s arms. “I fear I may never recover my character after this interval.”

“Seems to me you won’t have a problem channeling Virginia,” Starsky said. “We’ll be leaving now.”

“Good morrow, gentlemen,” Roz called out. “My recent film is playing at the Fairview!”

“Movie people,” Hutch groaned, walking out of the shed. “Always one drama after another.”

“That was kind of fun, don’t you think?” Starsky bounced a little, pushing aside a corn stalk for Hutch to proceed him. “Livened up the day. Hey, good luck with the movie, Jed!” He waved at the desolate actor sitting with his back against an enormous pumpkin and reading a script.

“I’m in an episode of Charlie’s Angels next week.” Carstairs held up the script. “Gangster number two. I have scenes with Fawcett-Majors, so I’m boning up.”

“Great!” Starsky climbed into the car, completely satisfied. This was the kind of case he enjoyed. No violence, relatively good outcome and the report would be easy as pie to fill out. 

“What a waste of time,” Hutch grumped. “I—“

“Hey,” Starsky said to hold off Hutch’s rant. “It’s nearly the end of our shift. Let’s write reports quick, get a few hours of sleep, some dinner and then see that movie at the drive-in.” Hutch looked completely unconvinced by that plan. In fact, he looked downright hostile. “My treat,” Starsky added to sweeten the pot. Hutch smiled slightly. “We can have make-up sex before the flick.”

“We didn’t have an argument,” Hutch countered, starting the car.

“It was kind of an argument,” Starsky wheedled, flicking a finger along Hutch’s thigh. That alone raised an impressive specter in Hutch’s slacks. “And I can see that you have a convincing discussion opener to…”

“Start the debate?” Hutch said. “If we’re going to see something with specious historical content, then I get to choose dinner.”

“Done.” Starsky slid his hand over the warm bulge Hutch was harboring. He was up for anything that interested Hutch this much.

“Pumpkin soup, succotash, which is made from corn,” Hutch said with a grin. “And multi-grain bread. I know a great bistro.”

“I’d follow you anywhere,” Starsky vowed, completely happy. “Just don’t bite me on the neck.”

At the intersection with the really long red light, Hutch leaned over with his canines bared.

FIN


End file.
